The grand judicial chamber of the Jiangnan High Court was packed to the doors by eight-thirty in the morning.
Outside on the broad stone steps, a crowd of ten thousand people stood under a canopy of black umbrellas in the damp autumn air. They were textile weavers from the Song mills, dockhands from Ouyang shipping, and precision machinists from Murong Heavy Industries. They stood in disciplined, anxious silence, waiting to learn if their workplaces would be dismantled for scrap metal.
Inside the courtroom, the atmosphere was charged with high-stakes financial tension.
Two dozen corporate liquidation teams, private equity sharks, and vulture fund managers in expensive tailored suits sat in the gallery. They had flown in from Hong Kong, Singapore, and northern commercial capitals, smelling blood in the water. They held leather portfolios filled with asset-stripping spreadsheets and demolition schedules.
In the front row of the worker delegation sat Master Chen Gang, a sixty-two-year-old shipyard welder who had built freighters for thirty-five years. He clutched his worn aluminum worker badge with shaking fingers, his eyes red from sleepless nights. Beside him, three female textile foremen wept quietly into their scarves.
At the center of the judicial bench sat Chief Judge Lu, a grey-haired magistrate with forty years on the bench.
